Trials

The most frustrating thing about learning to play an instrument is that sometimes you suck. Right now (right, right now - I'm procrastinating) I'm learning to play Massenet's 'Meditation' and I want to bloody throw my viola on the ground and stand on it. Because I was better last week.

Why? It's frustrating. If I was just awful and I stayed awful all the time that would be absolutely fine, but that glimmer of musical credibility that I hear once in a while just makes it so infuriating when I sink back into the doldrums.

Matthew is self-deprecating today. It's a good thing because ninety-nine times out of a hundred he is pompous.

Book update: finished one 'young adult' fantasy novel for the library club. It's called 'The Keeper's Daughter' by Gill Arbuthnot. Enjoyable. A solid 7.8. I have to read another young adult fantasy novel and then I'm going to back to my darling littérature. Currently debating between Matthew Lewis's 'The Monk' (Gothic Romanticism -- ah!) and Vladimir Nabkov's 'Lolita' (infamous twentieth century Russian sexcapade - ah!) The life of a teenager is a difficult one.

Poetry!

"If one really truly does indeed want to go to Cambridge then one really does have to begin studying poetry."

That is my inner scholar. He is very annoying but very correct. For that reason I bought the most beautiful little collection of poetry books a couple of days ago. It included:

• W.B. Yeats
• T.S. Eliot
• Sylvia Plath
• Ted Hughes
• W.H. Auden
• John Betjeman

I'll admit that before I bought the collection I had heard of four out of those six poets. But that's why I read! To learn! To that end I have started with Yeats. I have thus far read the very long introduction and about four poems, methinks. I'm not really feeling proper analysis, however.

In other news I have read the first book of Mervyn Peake's 'Gormenghast' trilogy, and I am in LOVE. I am convinced that it is indeed 'proper' literature, even though it doesn't have 'social context' or anything of the sort. I mean, it has endured more than fifty years in print. And what it does have is themes, and character, and motive, and macabre description!

I need to up the ante with my reading schedule or else no one will ever believe I'm smart.

I've Gotten Over My Fear of Woolf Quite Completely

I've been frantically googling Virginia Woolf for the past hour. I want 'The Waves' in my life. I will STORM through 'David Copperfield' so the spree can begin. Erk. One should never storm through Dickens.

Bad self.

I Forgot To Give It A Title Again - Oh Wait That's Not Very Interesting So I Suppose I'll have to Call It 'BA BA BAH PROGRESSSSS'

Whoopsies. Almost two months have passed by, and in that time something truly very exciting has happened.

I FINISHED LES MISERABLES.

And it was so incredibly good. Unfortunately I have a suspicion that this feeling of adoration is akin to Stockholm Syndrome: I had spent so long in custody of this book that it became a major part of my life; I read so much about the characters that I became almost forcefully involved with them. Maybe. That's one theory - the other is that it's just a truly spectacular book and everybody should read it.

A bit of both?

I have also read... 'Mrs. Dalloway' by Virginia Woolf (LOVE.), 'My Antonia' by Willa Cather (how 20th century American writing really should be), and 'The English Patient' by Michael Ondaatje (really very good and I could have enjoyed it a lot more if I had focused more).

Right now I'm reading 'David Copperfield' and I just want to swear my love for Charles Dickens. I mean, he does for literature what Taylor Swift does for country music: he makes it enjoyable, accessible and vivid. Nobody else describes a character or a scene quite like him, with his varied and distinctive similes, wonky personal traits etc. etc. This is my second Charles Dickens novel - I read 'Great Expectations' a few months ago. So far it's better than GE in one way and worse in one way.

BETTER: Pip is a horrible person. It's probably not very 'intellectual' of me to have qualms with a novel for hating the protagonist, but he just really winds me up. In contrast David Copperfield is recognisable and lovable. 1-0.

WORSE: Being semi-autobiographical, 'David Copperfield' tends to completely change everything once in about every thirty pages. First he's at home, then he's at Peggotty's (I LOVE YOU PEGGOTTY), then he's at school, then he's at work. BAM BAM BAM. The pace is too fast. We're not given enough time to acquaint with the characters and the period fully. It keeps the novel entertaining, for sure, but I'm quite sure it could be entertaining if a little more time was spent on each section.

That being said I'm only 200 pages through the 900. I'll have to read the rest to make up my mind properly.

After this I'm going on a Virginia Woolf spree. University interview and all that. Ta-rah!

I Like Your Mom's Books

I'm actually only writing this since it's been a week since my last update.

I was at my friend's house a few days ago. This particular friend happens to have a mother who studied English at university, and we all know what that means: BOOKS. For years now I have looked at the cornucopia of books and wanted so badly to take them home and read them. Unfortunately my friend always said I wasn't allowed to. This time, however, PATRICIA (his mother) came into the room while I was gazing longingly at the bookcase. We launched into an enormous, digressive conversation about this and that author while she enthusiastically thrust books into my hands to read this summer. I have to say I'm very excited. So, without further adieu, Matthew's Summer Reading List:

• 'My Antonia' my Willa Cather
• 'Mrs Dalloway' by Virginia Woolf
• 'To The Lighthouse' by Virginia Woolf'
• 'A Farewell to Arms' by Ernest Hemingway'
• A book of short stories by Chekov
• 'The English Patient' by Michael Ondaatje
• 'The Glass Menagerie', 'Sweet Bird of Youth', 'A Streetcar Named Desire' by Tennessee Williams
• 'A Raisin in the Sun' by Lorraine Hansbury
• The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake

That's the general rough order of when I'm going to read them, although it's highly dependent on how taxing each book is. I might add in some mind-numbing tweeny books along the way. For comfort, you see.

And, of course, there's Les Mis. The less said of my 'progress' the better.

I always forget to give posts a title

It's never a good idea to start writing a blog post when you have absolutely no idea what you're going to say. It inevitably leads to rambling. Oh well.

So, my one-year anniversary of reading Les Miserables is coming up in a little over a month. Yes, I have been reading it for over eleven months. On and off. While reading many other books. And generally having a life. There are two very clear reasons why this book is taking me so long to read:

• It's ENORMOUS. There are just so many pages to this book. It requires such immense willpower to just consider reading it.
• No writer that has ever lived will digress quite as prosaically as Victor Hugo. Les Mis is absolutely excellent when he's directing the plot, themes or character. However, every few hundred pages Hugo just launches into a rant about something not entirely irrelevant, but so insignificant that one could easily grasp the scene without a sixty-page rant about a convent. This just makes the former point even more difficult. Just keep to the actual point and we'll get along fine, Monsieur Hugo.

That's all that I'm going to say on Les Mis. It's SUMMER VAYCAY, as I've heard said in various American TV programmes. Unfortunately everybody is leaving me this summer. Enormous holidays in New Zealand and Japan do not make me happy. What are you supposed to do without people around you?

(You could write...)

HUSH. That is most definitely on the agenda for this summer. Just leave it to me. I'm doing nothing tomorrow. I'll brainstorm. I'll hunt for plot bunnies. I will ride the wave of creative...wonder.

I hate the way advertisements make you want things.

Deeper Understanding

I read 'The Great Gatsby' by F. Scott Fitzgerald for the second time yesterday, and I have to say that I enjoyed it much more the second time around.

Quick digression: THE KEYBOARD/MOUSE IS BEING SO UNHELPFUL TODAY.

Anyway, I think the only reason I disliked it upon first reading was because I was young, and speed reading. Never a good combination. For example, I didn't realise that Jay Gatsby was in a criminal syndicate. Obviously I cannot speed read.

This time however, it was very enjoyable, although I still wanted to slap Daisy. But it's a lovely little book all the same. I would have to disagree that it's one of the 'three perfect examples of American Literature.

Here in Northern Ireland we study 'The Great Gatsby' in English Literature during Year 14, but not everybody in this country does. I've heard that every single student in America is forced to read it, though. That sounds fun.

The enthusiasm/grammar isn't flowing today.